by Roan Parrish
I looked up at the corner of the ceiling where the uneven plastering had stared down at me accusingly every night I spent on the couch, but now it just looked like a faint shadow. Hardly anything. Barely even noticeable at all.
Rhys narrowed his eyes at me like he couldn’t tell if I was being serious.
“Never mind,” I said. “I just meant…I, uh.”
Rhys was staring at me like he’d never seen me before, and I really wanted to end this conversation.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, I was bad while you were gone. I’m gonna be better. Okay?”
I made my eyes heated and leaned in to kiss him, but he caught my shoulders and made me look at him. He looked…shocked?
“Matty, you weren’t…you weren’t bad. I’m trying to tell you that I’m here for you. That I want to know what goes on with you, and how you’re feeling, even if you’re feeling shitty. I’ve…I’ve fucking begged you to talk to me. I’ve told you a thousand times how much I want to know everything about you.”
My chest was so tight I couldn’t breathe. He had told me that. He had. But then every time I’d told him just a piece, shown him just the corners, the look on his face…the fucking pain he felt for me. It was like he was asking me to touch a red-hot poker to his gut. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand to inflict such pain on him. He loved me so much. I couldn’t bear to tell him things that would hurt him.
“We’ve built our life together,” he said, like it was already past. “I want it to be what you want! We’re partners. I want to share everything with you, even the bad stuff.”
I pushed off the couch, shaking my head.
“No?” Rhys demanded, also standing. “No, to what part?”
He was so big.
“I can’t share everything with you because it’s disgusting!”
I’d never said anything like it to him before. Not out loud. Maybe, in the depths of the night, in the shelter of our bed, my grasping hands and needy arms had held on to him in a way that spoke of it. But always, I’d kept it locked away because Rhys gave me hope.
Now, it was seeping from me like I had no control of myself. Like the cracks his absence had opened were gaping too wide and letting all the nightmares out.
Rhys’s face fell and he looked startled. Confused.
“What? Why?”
“Because I’m not that person anymore, and I don’t want to be him. I want to be the person I am with you.”
Rhys’s expression gentled.
“But the person you were, the things you experienced…they affect who you are now.”
“No,” I insisted stubbornly. “I mean, yeah. But I don’t want to…I can’t…I can’t ruin things for you.”
“What does that mean, Matt?” he said, patience with an edge.
I was drenched in sweat, and I thought I might puke again. My heart was racing and there was a rushing in my ears.
“It means you’re…you’re you. You’re Rhys and you’re basically perfect and when you look at me it’s like the world can maybe, possibly be what you think it is, but if I tell you how it really is—how it was for me—then you won’t be you anymore. And I need you to be you. I need—”
Fuck, I was so selfish. I wrapped my arms around my roiling stomach.
“Matt. Slow down and tell me what you mean, please.”
My voice came out choked. “You believe that things are gonna be okay. You believe it enough for both of us. And I need you to because I…I can’t.”
“But,” Rhys said. “But we made vows. Don’t you…I mean…Doesn’t that mean…”
My head was spinning and the sweat was pouring off me. What had I done? Rhys sounded terrified. Gutted. He sounds like you. How did I close the cracks? How did I seal back up the skin of me that protected Rhys from the terrible cosmic darkness that threatened to swallow everything?
“I just…people can always leave.”
Rhys flinched. Then he looked furious.
“Don’t say that to me,” he said, low and dangerous. That was good. I liked him dangerous. Danger was real.
“It’s true,” I breathed.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. “I would never fucking leave you, Matt. Tell me you know that I would never leave you.”
I wanted to close my eyes and kiss his mouth until he stopped talking and hold him close forever. I wanted to tell him what he wanted to hear. But more than that, I wanted him to understand.
“You might,” I said.
“No!” Rhys’s eyes were wild with confusion and pain. “Why are you saying this?”
He looked scared. He looked a little bit like I felt all the time.
“Because you can’t know! Because you can’t promise how you’ll feel in the future! Because everyone fucking leaves me!” I snarled in his face. And there it was, finally.
He looked so sad for me I wanted to slap him. Punch him. Tear him apart. For daring to have such compassion. For being capable of such empathy. For loving me. I felt like I was going to pass out.
“Sweetheart,” he said, his voice unbearably tender. “Your mom was deported. It’s horrible and unfair, but I’m sure she never would’ve left you if she could’ve helped it. And Grin moved to Florida for a job. They didn’t leave you. You have to start telling a different story.”
I almost started laughing as he repeated my own elliptical half-truths back to me like they were a salve for my pain. The bits I’d told him when we first met, before I really knew him. He’d accepted them without question, and the way he’d taken pity on me and always changed the subject when it was getting hard belied his desire to know the whole truth. I hadn’t outright lied, technically speaking. But I’d let him fill in the blanks and draw his own conclusions.
And, of course, because he was Rhys, of the married parents and the picket fence, his conclusions about my past were almost always wrong. Innocently wrong. It never occurred to him that people did cruel things intentionally, or that people whose job was to help sometimes hurt instead. He wasn’t stupid, just so okay, so confident, that he assumed people shared his outlook.
How could he think that he wanted to know the truth? How could he believe he’d asked for anyone else’s truth when his very existence—his very happiness—begged for confirmation of his own?
Then I did start laughing and I couldn’t stop. It didn’t sound like laughs, though. More like gasps. I shook my head, trying to catch my breath. How was it possible to sweat this much and shake this much and still be standing?
The room spun and the branches screamed and the horse’s hooves beat out a punishing rhythm, clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop, drawing ever closer.
If you couldn’t outrun a ghost, what could you do? The time for pretending it wasn’t real seemed to have passed, because I was falling the fuck apart. When it’s clear the ghost is real, the only thing you could do was stand and face it. Pull off the sheet and call it by its name.
“My mother wasn’t deported,” I choked out. “She left me at my aunt’s and never came back. She didn’t fucking want me anymore, Rhys. Just like my father didn’t fucking want me. Neither did my aunt. And Grin ran the fuck to Florida to get away from me. All my foster families— Everyone wants to get rid of me! You’ll see. And then you’ll get rid of me too!”
I didn’t realize I was yelling in his face until Rhys winced and my words echoed in the quiet of the cottage.
I wiped the sweat off my face and realized it was tears. Rhys gaped at me.
“You…lied to me?” Rhys said. I’d never heard his voice shake like that before, and it scared me. Everything about this conversation scared me.
Rhys backed away from me, looking as hurt and lost as a little boy.
“I can’t believe you fucking lied to me about all of that,” he said. His voice was shocked and disgusted and so, so sad,
and as he walked out the door, I realized that I might have miscalculated everything.
It wasn’t the ghost that was leaving. It was Rhys.
Chapter 10
Rhys didn’t come back. I sat on the couch staring out the window and waited, but the sun rose and still Rhys didn’t come home.
I checked my phone a hundred times, thinking he’d call or text. Check in. He hated to worry me. But there was nothing.
I kept getting flashes of him driving in the dark, reckless with anger and heartbreak and betrayal, and slamming into a tree. The truck a mangle of metal and fire and Rhys.
Finally, around noon, my stomach so empty I couldn’t even puke anymore, I texted Theo. I knew I had no right to text Caleb.
Is Rhys with you?
Yeah, Theo replied right away. Air slammed into my lungs so hard it made my head swim. Okay. Rhys was okay. That was something. I typed my response slowly.
Can I talk to him?
There was no response for a while, and even though I knew I was putting Theo in an awkward position, I couldn’t help myself.
I fucked up, I wrote. I really fucked up and I’m scared and rhys is so mad at me and he should be but I just need to hear his voice and I’m sorry to ask but please please can he call me.
I was sobbing and shaking and the ring of my phone made me jump. I scrambled to answer it.
“Rhys,” I choked out. “I’m sorry.”
But it wasn’t Rhys. It was Caleb.
“Matt, Rhys can’t talk to you right now.” Caleb’s voice was unspeakably calm. I tried to hold my breath so he couldn’t hear me crying, but the sounds still leaked out.
“Is he okay?”
Caleb sighed. “He’s safe. We’ll take care of him.”
But I was supposed to take care of Rhys. It had been what I was trying to do. And I had utterly failed at it.
“Is he c-coming home?” It came out as a sob, and I heard people talking in the background. Rhys and Theo, it had to be.
“Matty, listen,” Caleb said. He sounded pained. “You need to give Rhys some space right now, okay? He’s here; he’s safe. He’ll call you when he’s ready to talk. Okay?”
I felt like I was dissolving.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
I cried until I physically couldn’t cry anymore, my eyes swollen and gritty, my throat raw. I didn’t think I’d ever cried like that in my life. There was a purity to the pain I felt. A violent, uncomplicated clarity that came from knowing exactly who was to blame—me—and exactly what I might have lost—Rhys.
All other pain felt twisted and complicated and numbing in comparison; everything else I’d lost more shameful and less avoidable.
But there was no comfort in the clarity, only the hollowness that comes from emotional exhaustion.
When I couldn’t sit still any longer, I prowled around the house, cleaning everything. When there was nothing left to clean, I wandered from room to room the way I had when Rhys was on tour. The emptiness had a different quality to it now.
When the light began to change and Rhys still hadn’t called, I had to leave. I couldn’t stay in the house for one more second, and I couldn’t bear to let the sun set on it. I did the only thing I could think to do. I walked to the train station and went back to the city that had once been all I knew.
* * *
—
I didn’t know where I was and then I did.
Of course.
I was two blocks from home. From my aunt’s old apartment.
I’d ridden the train downtown, then gotten off and walked north. Walked the spine of Manhattan like a zombie. North through Hell’s Kitchen and the Upper West Side, past Columbia and City College. And I’d ended up here. Washington Heights.
It had taken hours and my feet throbbed. But that was nothing compared to the throbbing in my head. It felt like a tornado in there, pounding in my temples and raging at the base of my skull.
And then there it was. My old stoop. Achingly familiar and disconcertingly different at the same time. I couldn’t quite enumerate the differences but I knew they were there. Green paint on the railings instead of black, maybe? A chunk of concrete that wasn’t missing before? I couldn’t be sure.
And now, finally, I let myself sink down on the stoop I’d sat on so many times as a boy. It had been so long, and no time at all.
Maybe I’d been sitting on this stoop for years.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been sitting there when someone turned the corner. It was long gone full dark and I tensed instinctively, because it was a large man.
Rhys.
Fuck.
He heaved a sigh at the sight of me, and his face was tight with worry, his shoulders tensed. I scrambled to my feet, but he held out a hand to stop me and sank down beside me on the stoop.
He looked awful. He said nothing. The distance between us vibrated with a tension I felt in my whole body.
After a few minutes, he inched a little closer to me. Just close enough that he tipped his knee to rest against mine. The contact made my head spin, and I made a humiliating choking sound, so relieved that he still wanted to touch me. I wanted to reach for him but I was scared he’d pull away, and I thought if that happened I might crumble.
“You didn’t call.”
“I went home, but you weren’t there. Your phone was there.”
I fumbled at my pockets but didn’t find my phone.
“Shit, I don’t…I don’t remember.”
Rhys’s eyes looked swollen, his full mouth downturned. He handed me my phone.
“How’d you find me?” I asked, my voice raw.
“Grin.”
I blinked at him, wanting so badly to touch him and knowing I couldn’t.
“I’m so mad at you,” Rhys said. He sounded like he was about to cry. My stomach lurched, but at the same time it was such a Rhys thing to say. So honest and straightforward and fucking generous. No guessing with Rhys. No games.
“I know,” I said. Then, because I had nothing else to offer him, “I’m sorr—”
“Time to go now,” he cut me off.
He stood, and at the sight of him silhouetted against these buildings, worlds collided. I couldn’t make sense of him here. Or couldn’t make sense of here with him in it. He walked down the steps and kicked at the curb.
“I drove,” he said.
“Am I…do I come too?”
Pure pain flashed in Rhys’s eyes, and then he just looked exhausted.
“Yeah, you come too, Matty.”
I stood slowly, my feet protesting with pins and needles. Bed seemed nice. Sleeping forever seemed nice. But when I went to step off the stoop, I was frozen to the spot.
Finally I took a clumsy step onto the sidewalk. My head spun and there was a whooshing in my ears, like my cousins were yelling down the narrow hallway in the apartment.
I stumbled to a crouch at the curb and threw up. There was nothing left in my stomach, so it was just wrenching dry heaves.
“Oh, babe.”
Rhys’s voice. Rhys’s hand on my hair. Rhys was still there.
“I’m sorry,” I said miserably.
I wanted him to hold me, to tell me it was okay. That I hadn’t broken this thing between us beyond the point of repair. But he was mad, and I had no right to ask for comfort since it was all my fault, so I shoved my hands in my pockets and spat.
“I have gum in the truck.”
We drove home in silence. The water was black in the moonlight.
I made this journey ten times a week on the train. More, if we came into the city on the weekends. And every single time, I tried not to think. I tried not to think about the fact that the train skirted Washington Heights as we followed the Harlem River to the Hudson. That every day in my shiny new life,
I rode past the ruins of my old one. If I ever did accidentally think, I turned the thoughts always to You’re driving away, not toward. You’re moving past it.
Now, I tried to think. I struggled to put my thoughts into some kind of order, but the harder I tried the more they slithered away. Until we stopped at a red light, and I looked over at Rhys. Usually he drove with an easy, casual hand on his leg, just the slightest lazy movement of his wrist to turn the wheel.
Now he was clutching the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were white. The muscle in his jaw was clenched and he was swallowing hard. In the moment the light changed, before we sped off again into the darkness, the flash of green light illuminated the track of Rhys’s tears.
I’d seen Rhys laugh until he teared up, eyes squeezed shut, cheeks full and red. He’d wipe them away appreciatively and say, Aw, man, shaking his head. I’d seen him near tears at a couple of songs he loved. I’d seen his eyes water when chopping onions.
I’d never seen Rhys cry.
I pinched the inside of my wrist as hard as I could to keep from reaching toward him and I made a promise. I made a promise that I would do everything I could not to hurt him anymore. If he would just stay…if he would just give me another chance. I’d do anything.
The windows of the house gleamed bright in the darkness, and despite how horrible everything was, I felt a surge of relief at seeing it. It was the only home I’d ever felt that for.
Inside, I went to brush my teeth first thing, and when I came out of the bathroom, Rhys was standing near the bed. He looked so lost.
“Thanks for letting me come here,” I said.
“This is your home!” Rhys’s voice shook with anger, and I liked it because at least he didn’t seem so lost anymore. “I’m mad. I’m…I’m really mad. And we fought. Couples fight! But it doesn’t mean we give up.”
We’d never fought much before. Sometimes I was withdrawn and grouchy, and Rhys would tell me to cut it out. Sometimes he was oblivious and stubborn, and I’d tell him to cut it out. Sometimes we bickered and got irritated with each other. But it had never been like this.
“It doesn’t mean we’re breaking up. It doesn’t mean one of us is leaving,” Rhys said fiercely.